Submitting a Comic Book/Graphic Novel to a Publisher

Are you up to the daunting task?

Waiting for six months only to get a rejection letter could disappoint even the most optimistic individual, so make absolute sure you've sent your best possible work. I've recently submitted Project oHoly Hello to SLG Publishing (the same people who published Jhonen Vasquez's Johnny the Homicidal Maniac), and now I'm going to wait up to six months for a reply.

During this journey, I've looked up countless resources on how to submit to a publisher, but I found very little in the way of advice for comic book creators. The best resource I found was on SLG's site, where they were (thankfully) very clear on what they wanted. From what I've heard, they are on the generous side when it comes to the synopsis, though. Most people would prefer the synopsis be about a page long, whereas SLG was okay as long as it was under 5 pages (double spaced). I suppose each publisher is different.

Here's the general idea of what you should put in your submission to a publisher:

1. Post your name and contact information EVERYWHERE. Make sure they know goddamn well who you are and how to contact you. This is the most important thing. Publishers are busy people and they're not going to go out of their way to find you.

2. Go digital if you can. Traditional paperwork is on the out. While your at it, don't send CDs or promotional material either (unless the publisher specifically wants that). They want simple. You want simple.

3. Include a cover letter introducing yourself, your idea, how you're going to accomplish the idea, and who is working on the project. Within the cover letter, I explained who my audience is, approximately how many chapters there will be, how many pages in each chapter, potential other titles, and how long each chapter will take to complete. I also gave them four rules to follow when reading my synopsis. This was a bold (and not necessarily smart) move, but I found it necessary. My story is unusual, but the shortened synopsis takes out a lot of minute contexts from the story. The full synopsis was 10 pages long, and I let them know there IS a full synopsis containing more side characters, side plots, and character developments.

4. Synopsis. Try to keep this short and sweet. They just want to be sure of a few things. They want to know that you have a solid story set up. They want to have a general idea as to what this story is. They want to be sure it's something they would publish. This was by far the HARDEST part for me. I ended up including a glossary for terms used. The glossary took a page and a half, but I think it made the synopsis a lot more smooth to read. I hyper-linked the words too so you could just click on them to get the definition. I'm not sure if this was necessary or not. It was my way of solving a problem.

5. Character Reference Sheets. In order not to make myself insane, I had to cut out all but central players. Even some of what I'd normally consider central players weren't included just because I managed to cut their plot from the synopsis. I have at least 40 characters. There's no way I could complete all 40 in a timely manner. I cut it down to 14, and that was still an arduous task. Even until the end I had doubts about which characters I had chosen to show. Also, it came to mind that it's too bad my comic is in black and white. Balberith has such pretty eyes.

6. At least 5 pages of the first chapter. I actually included the entire first chapter. I almost included parts of the second chapter too, but the file size was enormous. This shows dedication, functionality, and reassures that your product is worth investing into. Nothing speaks like final product. If you don't have final product, go home. Also, a common misconception is that they'll just steal your idea if you give them too much of it. This is blatantly untrue. As long as it's unfinished, they'd be shooting themselves in the foot to steal your product because they'd have to hire someone to complete it when they could have just paid you. Not to mention the sheer amount of issues of legality. They wouldn't risk being sued. It's far too expensive. No offense; your stuff's good, but it's not THAT good.


Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going out with my adorable novel writing sister-in-law. Peach out people.